If Anything Can Happen, It Certainly Will

Matthew Cobb reports from the Spirit of Asilomar, an event celebrating the 50th anniversary of the legendary biotechnology conference.

By Matthew CobbSeptember 12, 2025

• Science & Technology

• History

IF YOU OR ANYONE you love uses insulin, you should be grateful for genetic engineering and Asilomar. Insulin, like many drugs, is now made by genetically engineered microbes, and it all goes back to Asilomar, a small area of beautiful state beach and sand dunes in Pacific Grove, California, just northwest of Monterey.

In February 1975, one of the most significant scientific meetings ever took place at Asilomar Conference Grounds. Around 140 academic researchers, together with journalists and scientists from major companies (e.g., Merck, General Electric, Searle), gathered at the conference grounds—once a YWCA camp, all wooden cabins and a few large stone-built buildings, surrounded by cypress and pines—to discuss how genetic-engineering experiments could be carried out safely, while the surf thundered in the distance. The scientists doing those experiments were so concerned about the potential dangers that, a few months before the meeting, they adopted a voluntary pause or moratorium on research involving what was then known as recombinant DNA, where nucleic acid from different organisms had been mixed.

A key outcome of the Asilomar meeting was a set of biosafety rules and protocols developed by the scientists themselves rather than imposed by the government. This soon led to a seismic shift in science, pharmaceutical research, and business practices, and eventually transformed the global economy. Asilomar was ground zero for the later explosion of biotechnology, which has become an integral part of the extractive, exploitative capitalist system that drives our world. Its liberatory potential—in terms of cheaper drugs and spreading scientific knowledge and production around the world—has yet to be fulfilled.

Meanwhile, scientific and technological developments are again promising (or threatening) to provide new tools that may transform our economy and culture. These include:

• totally synthetic laboratory organisms that could produce new pharmaceuticals but might also threaten ecosystems and human health if they escape;

• “mirror world” molecules, with the opposite molecular “handedness” to that found in nature, providing new ways of combating infection, but which, if used to build “mirror life,” might produce devastating microbes that we have no defense against (as dozens of leading researchers described in a published declaration); 

• new treatments or foods emerging from Indigenous knowledge and the resources of remaining wilderness areas.

All of these developments could be weaponized by malevolent forces (states or nonstates) and turbocharged by the power of artificial intelligence. These issues are urgent—the future is not written, but it soon will be.

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In February 2025, historian of science Luis Campos of Rice University and synthetic biology pioneer Drew Endy of Stanford University, with the support of the Philadelphia-based Science History Institute, gathered 300 people from six continents at Asilomar for four days to discuss the futures of biotechnology, in light of those discussions from half a century earlier—an event titled “The Spirit of Asilomar.”

Campos had been building up to the anniversary for over a year, with a series of meetings in Houston, Paris, and New York exploring the legacy of Asilomar, the role of the media at the meeting, and the links with future technological developments. As someone who had written a history of genetic engineering, I was invited along for the ride, as both a contributor and an observer. At the Spirit of Asilomar meeting, I was particularly involved in debates about biowarfare, something I feel strongly about, and in a pre-meeting session on historical perspectives, which included participants from 1975.

The idea of the 2025 gathering was not to cosplay the original single-topic meeting (dress code: flares, beards, and long hair for the men, few women present, virtually all the participants white) but to put together a wide range of people, with differing expertise and attitudes toward biotech, and see what futures they desired and feared. The organizers wanted to discuss questions that had direct links to 1975, such as biosecurity and bioweapons, and other topics that felt like 21st-century equivalents to the concerns of 50 years ago, such as the use of AI in biotechnology or the creation of synthetic cells, along with entirely new questions not discussed in 1975, like the role of extractive capitalism in identifying exploitable resources in the Global South and the need to engage communities in the technology’s future.

This time, there was a deliberate focus on including younger researchers (one-fifth of the attendees), women, social scientists and policymakers, and participants from the Global South and the new powerhouse of global science, China (both completely absent from the original meeting). There were journalists from the specialist press (Science, Nature, The Economist) as well as generalist publications (The New York Times, The New Yorker). There were also activists of all kinds—pro-GMO campaigners from Africa and South America, critics from Europe and the United States—and members of Indigenous populations who want to defend the biodiversity of their regions and control any exploitation of their genetic resources.

And there were artists. Ballet troupe Pigeonwing Dance performed a piece inspired by CRISPR genetic engineering. Other artists conjured up the spirit of the 1975 meeting, either through specially crafted scents that evoked the 1970s or via the impressive sound installation, where recently released tapes from the debates at the conference were played in the converted chapel where the original meeting took place.

The vibe was positive, as participants scoped out the area, dashed from discussion to discussion, and took breaks walking along the beach and watching deer chill under the trees. We met old friends from real life or the internet, fanboyed over people we had admired from afar, and, above all, tried to work out what we were there for.

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With so many attendees holding such varied interests, and no single issue overwhelming all others, there could never be a single, focused plenary discussion like that which emerged 50 years ago. Nor could this article hope to match Michael Rogers’s magisterial Rolling Stone coverage of the 1975 meeting. There was simply too much going on for any one person to capture it all.

The event’s coordinators responded to this challenge by organizing a series of wide-ranging subjects and working groups (you could mix and match and switch from session to session), grouped into five themes:

• Pathogen research, biological weapons, and the need to re-denounce biological weapons programs (2025 is also the 50th anniversary of the UN’s largely toothless Biological Weapons Convention).

• AI and biotechnology—sifting through the hype, developing an outline of ethical and effective governance, and ensuring that intellectual property rights are respected.

• Synthetic cells and the dangers of “mirror life”—how to ensure either a ban or a responsible use of such research, who should decide what kind of synthetic cells are created (if at all), and how governance could be enforced.

• The precautionary studies that should be undertaken, and the concerns or risks that should preoccupy local, national, and international communities, if new products of genetic engineering were to be released into the environment.

• Public involvement in the development and application of biotechnology, the importance of equity and control, and applying these in the varied political and economic systems around the world.

These themes and their subsidiary questions were debated in parallel sessions and in crosscutting mash-up meetings (fancily called “recombinations,” after the genetic term). There were also regular plenary sessions that updated the meeting on the progress—or lack thereof—made in the various discussions. During these debates, the historians present were amused to realize that, in some respects, little had changed, as many of the rhetorical and organizational tricks that were on display in 1975 were repeated half a century later. For example, one colleague sought to demonstrate the safety of his work by proclaiming that he was happy to drink a concoction containing his synthetic microbe—just as, in 1975, a researcher had said he swallowed his engineered bug, with no ill effects.

Other things had changed. For example, when discussing the risks associated with the unintentional escape of genetically engineered organisms 50 years ago, this question focused on risks to laboratory workers. It led to the codiscoverer of the DNA double helix, Jim Watson, heckling that “we can’t even measure the fucking risks!” Watson, like many others around the world, thought there was no danger and that everyone should just get on with their experiments, unhindered. The status quo of “academic freedom” was fine for Watson. By contrast, in 2025, several hours were spent exploring how to measure the environmental risks associated with genetically modified organisms—these risks also apply to the introduction of plants and soil from other parts of the world and similar “natural” events. Someone asked whether the Environmental Protection Agency already had such a framework. “No,” came the reply. Although alarming, this suggested the discussions would be useful.

The presence of so many young researchers—grouped under the portentous title of “Next Generation Leaders” or NGLs—gave rise to some of the most combative discussions. These tended to be less focused on details and more on the big societal questions of equity, access, and environmental protection. The young researchers brought enthusiasm and political insight—one historian said that the NGLs were the most hopeful and optimistic thing he had seen in years.

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Although the 1975 Asilomar meeting came to a relatively precise conclusion, adopting an outline of biosafety protocols, in 2025 there was no single priority, and it soon became apparent that it would not be feasible even to adopt a position document for each theme. Instead, nearly 30 outline statements were produced and later discussed online for weeks. Any document that got the backing of 10 percent of the attendees (around 30 people) was eventually made public. To enable people to sign up even if they did not agree with every dot and comma, these documents were not called declarations or statements but “entreaties,” or “an endorsed and earnest request for consideration.”

Twenty-seven entreaties were made public, providing a permanent readout of the debates. The entreaties relating to precise innovations or threats—bioweapons, synthetic cells, mirror life, and releasing GMOs into the environment—are more detailed, providing a starting point for attempts to regulate the technology, and are implicitly addressed to those with power: leading scientists, funding agencies, governments. The most detailed entreaty discusses the role of artificial intelligence in biotechnology. While accepting the revolutionary potential of AI to help develop solutions to specific problems, the authors also outline governance frameworks to prevent misuse, providing a global approach to risk assessment and management.

The entreaties that are more broadly cast, such as those on Indigenous biotechnology or advancing responsible biotech innovation, are more aspirational. They describe a radically different way of approaching not only the bioeconomy but also the economy as a whole, and are primarily addressed to like-minded researchers and activists around the world, calling for ‘‘a democratic and community-centered innovation ecosystem” revolving around “community biology labs and […] other alternative ownership enterprises.”

At one level, these contrasting approaches represent a reiteration of the timeworn dilemma facing all those seeking change: should efforts be focused on winning small changes (e.g., a regulatory framework for releasing GMOs) or on challenging the underlying cause that leads to the problem (i.e., extractive capitalism)? As Rosa Luxemburg, a Polish-German Marxist, put it in 1899, “reform or revolution?”

In 2025, no one argued for a Marxist revolution. Instead, the most radical approaches were a 21st-century biotech version of the ideas of the 19th-century thinkers Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Mikhail Bakunin, who opposed Marxist strategies for creating a workers’ state and instead advocated for the creation of small-scale, self-governing cooperatives. Few if any voices directly criticized the biotech industry and its inevitable ultimate focus on profit, potentially at the cost of safety. It seems that the genie that Asilomar released in 1975 cannot be put back in the bottle—even those sketching an alternative economic model accepted the need for private funding, albeit tamed and controlled, if such a thing is possible.

In 1975, scientists at Asilomar unwittingly rediscovered the principles of democratic debate; in 2025, they inadvertently replicated 19th-century disputes over how to produce global change. In 1975, the choice on most participants’ minds was “reform or the status quo.” They eventually adopted the idea of reform because they feared that federal government regulation would be even more draconian.

That there are different approaches in the entreaties is not necessarily a problem—they are born of different timescales and different levels of detail in both analysis and solution. You can simultaneously argue for both reform and revolution. But even the immediate “reforms” outlined in some of the entreaties—banning bioweapons, rejecting the inevitability of mirror life, establishing an environmental risk-assessment framework—cannot be guaranteed for long without fundamentally changing the power relations within global society.

This bigger issue can also be seen in one question that was striking for its absence, except as a kind of malevolent background hum: President Donald Trump’s growing attacks on science, science funding, and initiatives aimed at increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). These attacks threaten the future discoveries and applications we were discussing. Indeed, it seems probable that the DEI focus of the 2025 meeting may not be repeated for many years. Although Trump’s shadow darkened some discussions around the cafeteria tables, on the beach, or over late-night beers, most people seemed to be in denial, vainly hoping that things might not turn out as badly as some of us fear. In reality, the world was changing, and we were playing catch-up.

The difficulty of finding agreement over what are essentially political issues can be seen in the way the 2025 meeting addressed one of the most contentious issues in nonhuman applications of biotech: its use in conservation. This often revolves around disputed claims that genetic engineering can revive or “de-extinct” charismatic extinct animals such as the woolly mammoth, the dire wolf, or the dodo. Two entreaties explored this issue, and both settled for outlining the arguments on either side and expressing the hope that by working together, differences might be overcome. It remains unclear if some kind of compromise is possible, or if the differences are truly contradictory.

The advantage of the entreaty format is that it represents beginnings, not conclusions. The 1975 Asilomar meeting had one limited aim, which could be attained by a vote. Asilomar 2025 had far greater ambitions and inevitably fell short. As the organizers and the whole conference recognized, that is not a problem—argument, debate, and, perhaps, resolution can come in the future—but the fact that the difficult issues were not resolved shows how hard it will be to find agreement.

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The 1975 Asilomar meeting was also notable for the issues that were not debated but that turned out to be of major significance in subsequent years. For example, bioweapons were not discussed, having apparently been dealt with by the recent Biological Weapons Convention, while the idea of making money from recombinant DNA merely hovered in the air, signaled by the presence of some major companies’ researchers. However, the USSR had recently begun its terrifying secret bioweapons program (the affable members of the Soviet delegation at Asilomar were involved) while, a few weeks before the 1975 meeting, organizer Paul Berg was horrified to discover that Stanford and UC San Francisco had secretly taken out a patent on a key genetic engineering technique. If this had become known before or during the meeting, the attempt by the community to self-regulate would have been seen as self-serving, a way of getting rich quick.

If there were any similar secret agreements or nefarious projects in 2025, that will be for history to explore. But there were some serious issues that were not discussed. For example, there was no debate about human genetic engineering, either the modification of the human embryo or the selection of fertilized embryos supposedly to improve certain characteristics in the resultant child, both of which are a form of eugenics. Germ-line modification has been the subject of a series of huge global summits, most recently in 2023, which have eventually opposed this technique (it is illegal in most countries), while preimplantation embryo selection does not involve genetic manipulation and is also illegal in many countries, except for very precise medical reasons.

There was also no discussion around “gain of function” research by virologists seeking to understand how dangerous naturally occurring viruses might become, which has caused some of the most acrimonious biotechnology debates. This, it has been mistakenly claimed, was the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although there was plenty of discussion and condemnation of bioweapons, there was little talk of COVID-19 origins or of the desirability of gain of function experiments. One reason for this may have been the meeting’s focus on the technological applications of genetic engineering. Gain of function research is intensely practical but has no commercial implications.

Also missing was any discussion of gene drives—self-replicating genetic modification of pests, such as mosquitoes, that could make them extinct in a particular region. These systems could lead to the eradication of malaria, but the ecological consequences of removing a species from an ecosystem are difficult to estimate. The excitement around gene drives has cooled recently, partly because antimalarial vaccines are now available. Biotechnology is not the answer to every problem.

Interestingly, these absences were not desired by the organizers. For example, they explicitly highlighted the question of gain of function research, and individuals and organizations critical of gene drives were among the attendees. But discussions sometimes have their own logic, and it turned out that these topics were not the focus of any great argument, despite the strong opinions that are held about them. The future will tell us if this was a collective error—if we ignored a terrifying biotechnological elephant in the room—or if we were justified in allowing our attention to focus on other questions.

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The overwhelming lesson of Asilomar 2025—and indeed of the 1975 meeting—is that, no matter what tech advocates may claim, science and technology are not autonomous or inevitable. They are the outcome of funding choices, implicit or explicit, made by powerful forces. No technological application is destined to be adopted, and calling for regulation—or banning—is not retrogressive. It may simply be sensible, acting in the interests of the many, not the few.

There is a significant rider to this skeptical view of the supposed ineluctability of technological development. One thing that has been learned over the decades, and has recently been applied to both gene drives and mirror life, is that the time to debate whether a particular technology should be applied or developed or even invented is before it becomes a commercial reality. As we can see in the case of the “AI” that is currently polluting the internet like digital asbestos, by the time large financial interests become involved, it is already too late to do much to restrict development. By then—that is, now—little can be done to regulate the technology until the negative aspects become overwhelming. Even then, as we can see from the robust health of the carbon economy, existential threats to the whole planet may still not be sufficient to curb the appetite for technological profit.

In one sense, the futures of biotechnology on offer in 2025 were more of the same—cheap and reliable drug production, new bases for manufacturing, and cleanup systems to eradicate forms of pollution. In the cooperative visions put forward by the NGLs, these developments would be effected for the greater good, helping to heal the planet rather than endanger it further. But in all the discussions, there was the acute awareness that things could go wrong, that biotechnology is different from other forms of technological development. As the scientist Sydney Brenner warned in the run-up to the 1975 meeting:

The essence is that we now have the tools to speed up biological change and if this is carried out on a large enough scale then we can say that if anything can happen it certainly will. In this field, unlike motor car driving, accidents are self-replicating and could also be contagious.

That is why the first Asilomar meeting took place in 1975, and why we gathered there again in 2025. It is also why other such meetings will be necessary in the future. The relative ease with which the technology can now be applied, and its inherent dangers, makes it essential that such discussions and surveillance continue. Depending on what happens in the meantime—in science, in the environment, and, above all, in politics—the alternatives explored in future discussions may be as radically different from those outlined in 2025 as those were from the meeting 50 years ago.

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Featured image: Adam Fagen. Welcome to Asilomar, March 19, 2015. Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, flickr.com. Accessed September 9, 2025. Image has been cropped.